My thoughts, ponderings and coffee grounds.

So why an atheist?

It is a common point on online discussions about atheism to focus on the meaning of the word itself. Atheism, as used by many atheists and the definition that I use when I say I’m an atheist is ‘lacking a belief in the existence of a god or gods’, but this is not a sufficient explanation for some people. I will try to address why I choose the atheist label for myself.

To begin with, many people want to push forward the idea that atheism is the absolute belief that no gods exist. The definition does in fact exist, but it describes a belief that most sophisticated atheists do not hold. It is also notably a subset of the above definition, as you cannot logically have a belief in the non-existence of gods without lacking the belief that one exists, although the opposite is true.

This is a frustrating point in many discussions, since the proponent of the second definition accuses atheists of not knowing what our position is, and subsequently demanding that we defend the second claim which, they contend, reflects our “true position”

This of course is asinine. Once I have clarified what I mean when I use the term ‘atheism’, my explicit position on the subject is what I will maintain. Even if I were to agree that the term solely applied to the second definition, the rational course of action would be to choose a different label to apply to my position, not change my position to reflect the label. Consider how silly this sounds if we try this rationale elsewhere:

– “Hey, I’m a Teabagger.”

-“What’s that?”

-“It means I’m a member of the Tea Party.”

-“No, it doesn’t. This dictionary describes teabagging as a deviant sex practice”

-“Really? *reads definition* Oh well. I better get to it then, where’s the nearest sex shop?”

It’s absurd. Dictionaries reflect usage, they don’t impose it. New coinages and new meanings for old words occur every day, so to deny the definition I proclaim because it isn’t in your reference book of choice is just lazy thinking at best.

this absurdity is rarely mentioned because of the most obvious fault of the position, that my definition of atheism is in fact the one used by most atheists to describe themselves amongst ourselves. This isn’t a new idea, it’s been around of years. This is what we mean, and this is the position I should defend. For a theist to argue with me on the matter of definition is just disingenuous.

A number of the people who promote the ‘belief no gods exist’ definition claim that the ‘lacking a belief in god’ is so vague that babies, animals or even inanimate matter could be classified as ‘atheist’. They claim that these categories can’t be atheist, since they couldn’t accept theism even in principle.

I don’t see that as a problem. Atheism is a negation of theism (which is ‘belief in at least one god’), and the same ‘problem’ can be posited on many words that describe a negative.

A teetotaler is someone who abstains completely from alcoholic beverages. By that definition you can describe a baby as a teetotaler, but that doesn’t mean its capable of going to a bar and asking for a drink. Illiteracy is the absence of the ability to read, which by definition makes both newborns and butterflies illiterate, but doesn’t imply that butterflies can learn. Death is the absence of life, yet we can describe barren rocks as being dead, and even metal objects such as doornails (of the ‘dead as a doornail’ variety) . That you can call rocks ‘atheist’ is not wrong, it just isn’t useful, just like it isn’t useful to call a butterfly illiterate, or a baby a teetotaler.

I will however make a concession here to theists, and that is, when I am talking about atheism being the default position, and when I’m talking about atheism being a rational position, I’m not talking about the exact same thing. They are both lack of belief in gods, but in the former case it is implicit, due to lack of knowledge of any gods, while in the latter it is explicit, that is, the person has been informed of god claims and has rejected them.

Further confusion comes with the misunderstanding of what we mean by ‘god’. The word god means very different things to different people. There are several thousand recorded gods in the various religions and mythologies throughout human history. I can’t say I have more than cursory knowledge of more than a hundred. Then, there are god concepts offered by theologians that have never had an existence outside some theoretical argument, or held the belief of anyone, not even their author. There are god concepts that by definition are unprovable, undisprovable, or both. Even if we discount all of these, there are still infinite possibilities of concepts of gods, some that will be postulated in the future, and some that may never be actualized in theological thought, but could be viable candidates.

Any honest researcher will admit that you cannot make the claim that absolutely no gods exist until you examine every single claim, which is impossible. That is not what atheism claims. I don’t need to disprove any god concept to disbelieve it, and I don’t need to disprove every god concept to be justified in doing so.

There is another way to look at the question “why an atheist?” and that comes from my side of the fence. It’s basically the question of whether ‘atheist’ is the best term for what our position is. I’ll post my thoughts on that on my next article.

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The thing is that atheism sometimes means lack of belief in gods and sometimes it means disbelief in god-claims. It doesn’t mean one thing when we speak with the theists or amongst ourselves. When you ask someone if they are a strong or a week atheist, you don’t mean then that atheism is a lack of belief in gods. You specifically ask how much they disbelieve, so the word means some measure of disbelief in that question.
So you can’t say that atheism has one default meaning, it has several meanings, depending on what you are saying when the word is put in a sentence.

I agree that atheism has many meanings. For one thing, the term has a complicated history. Another thing is that people say ‘atheism’ as shorthand for strong, weak, implicit, or explicit atheism. The term is a mess, which is why there have been several initiatives to remove the term from circulation.

What I’m saying is that there is one definition that covers what most people who identify as atheists mean by the term. That definition is ‘lack of belief in gods’. To pick another definition and try to shoehorn these atheists into it, is absurd.
Antimatter’s video today was an excellent example, which I will address in a subsequent post,

Not only “atheism” is contaminated this way. Agnostic and theist is also having various definitions depending on context.
Sometimes theist imply religious or being part of a religion, though in other cases the term just means that you believe some god or gods exist.
Sometimes agnostic means that you are balancing the arguments for and against to amount to being equally valid arguments. Sometimes it means that gods can’t be argued for or against in any meaningful way to begin with, and other various definitions.
Best thing is to try and understand what the speaker is meaning by the word, and just ride along with that definition. Like when a youtube user argued why there exist no atheists, I simply agreed with him, due to what he meant with the word. But I pointed out, of course, that people who call themselves atheists rarely claim to be omniscient.

Agreed again, about agnosticism and theism. The problem starts with the problematic definition of ‘god’ and it just tumbles from there.

My objections start when theists take arguments that are made under a certain set of definitions, and respond to them under a different, sometimes arbitrary,others valid but irrelevant in that instance, set of definitions. When you see people use their own set of definitions, there is often such an equivocation lurking in their argument.

I dislike the practice even when atheists do it, although there it is sometimes a case of denominational confusion, e.g. looking at a Calvinist argument through an (ex-)catholic outlook. However I have seen too many times atheists take for granted positions that their christian interlocutors have already dismissed or repudiated.

I especially dislike this practice though when it is transparently a case of trying to shift the burden of proof.

A very good article caffeine🙂. I don’t like definitions because they are misused to label people – very often arbitrarily and mistakenly. Of course they are useful in communication :p. Lacking a belief in the existence of a god or gods is what I say for myself as well when asked what does it mean for me being an atheist…

Hello. Interesting essay. I basically agree with your position, but I can understand the point of view of those who are dissatisfied with the definition of atheism as “lacking a belief in the existence of a god or gods.” Indeed, a butterfly or a rock also lack such a belief. If you were to add the stipulation that, unlike butterflies and rocks, your lack of belief is a conscious one (and therefore a “useful” distinction) then I think you would be inviting the question, What precisely do you mean by a “conscious lack of belief”? There’s a contradiction in there somewhere…

In the positive sense, I think there are two distinct forms of atheism: 1) a disbelief in the existence of gods; 2) a disbelief in all known claims made concerning the existence of gods. The first is irrational, because no one who isn’t omniscient could justify such a sweeping claim about the ultimate reality of the universe. (Thus, as you write, many sophisticated atheists avoid this formulation.) The second version seems entirely reasonable. It’s rational to positively reject any claim — theistic or otherwise — that isn’t supported by evidence.

From what you write I get the sense that your conception of (a seemingly negative) atheism as “lack of belief” is actually rooted in this second form of positive disbelief. In other words, I sense that instead of lacking belief you actually possess a belief.

Hello Mike, and thanks for the comment.
The point I’m trying to make is that words that apply to the negation of things, by definition only apply to a much larger subset of reality than the positive. In practice however the usefulness of the term is restricted by the subset that the positive applies to. “Death”,outside of figurative language, is only relevant to things that can be alive. Similarly, “atheist” is only useful for things that can in principle subscribe to theism. It doesn’t mean that the definition is lacking.

I think the phrase “conscious lack of belief” is an awkward one. It implies that one is conscious of their lack of belief, which is possible but not necessary for atheism to apply. This seems unlikely, considering how inundated global culture is with the god concept, but you can be a thinking adult without knowledge of gods, and therefore be a de facto atheist.

I’m confused at your use of the term ‘positive’ when talking about disbelief.

When you say I ‘positively reject’ a claim, this is not equal to affirming a different positive claim. To make the claim say,”God doesn’t exist” in a vacuum I would need to actually define a god and then defend its non-existence, which would be absurd. Addressing “God” claims is meaningful only in the terms defined by people who claim “God” exists and how they relate to reality (which theoretically would include “God” popping down to affirm his own existence, if it ever happened).

Finally, regarding holding beliefs, I don’t think any atheist thinker has ever claimed atheist hold no beliefs whatsoever, that would be absurd. We all hold beliefs about many different things. I hold many positive beliefs, such as the belief that its good to believe things with evidence, the belief that the acquisition of knowledge is a good thing etc. To claim that I hold some belief is trivially true, but that’s not what defines my atheism, the lack of belief in the proposition “god exists” does.

Nice post Cafeeine especially when clarifying the application of a term, before or after information has been given.

Personally i consider myself rationalist and not atheist and atheism is only a subset of rationalism. Based on my rational beliefs i have to say that i am one of the small minority who thinks that “God does not exist 100%”. And this has to do with the fact that there is absolutely no reason to even examine the concept of God as there is absolutely no need to examine the concept of Brlafld. What is Brlafld? I don’t know and i don’t care to know about it since no proof of it never existed. In fact i am the one who invented it right now and i don’t think that anyone should spend any time examining the concept of Brlafld.

Likewise, since all the facts show that Gods are man’s inventions, and no unexceptionable proof has ever existed…
No examination, no investigation, God does not Exist 100%

Hello again, Caffeeine. It’s been awhile since I made my earlier comment, but having wandered back onto your site I thought I would try to clarify my earlier comment.

I guess by “negative,” in the context of belief, I meant the absence of a belief and by “positive” I meant the presence of a belief. Your favored definition of atheism, then, is of the negative sort, but I don’t see how that position is even possible for someone who is not totally innocent of the question of whether a god exists. It is certainly possible for infants, certain mentally handicapped people, and socially isolated persons or groups. It might also be possible of someone who has heard the question but paid it absolutely no mind. (For any of these people, the term “atheist” would be impossible to self-apply.) You’re obviously not any of those. You have confronted the issue and taken a position — i.e. you’ve formed a belief.

I guess I was just trying to make a distinction between the absence of belief and the presence of disbelief. As for disbelief, I suggested there were two forms of atheism that can be considered “positive” positions in this sense: the bold ontological assertion that there exist no gods; and the milder epistemic assertion that no convincing evidence has been given for the existence of gods, and therefore all (known) theistic claims are to be rejected. I was suggesting that perhaps you actually fall under the latter of these two categories. (Perhaps I was being presumptuous!)

One thing I’m certain about, Cafeeine, is that your definition of atheism is far too vague. It may be true, as you point out, that those who posit the nonexistence of god form a subset of the larger group covered under your definition, but it is equally true that agnostics form another subset. They too lack a belief in the existence of a god or gods.

* Π1: The question of the existence of God is unfalsifiable*
* Π2 :Unfalsifiable questions cannot be answered by means of rationality
* Π3: “Strong atheists” claim that they only trust pure reason

Notice that Π3 is incompatible with Π1 and Π2. If a “strong atheist” can only trust pure reason then he can not answer the question of the existence of God (Π1) which is a contradiction. A “strong atheist” claims that Π1 can (potentially) be solved by means of rationality! On the other side if he is not purely rational -which by definition means that his not a “strong atheist” – then his claim should be based on his subjective belief (and thus in some sence he is similar to the theists).

*The question is unfalsifiable because it can not be rejected by either absence of evidence or by subjective experience.”

I hence tend to think that strong-atheism is irrational and inconsistent. You can not be certain that God does not exist because you just believe it! Subjective belief is not a medium of absolute rejection…

Furthermore beliefs are always ΝΟΤ absolute! Your claim that you **believe** in “strong atheism” is inconsistent. Something is certain only if no skepticism can occur. Hence beliefs are uncertain! You can have a strong degree of belief but not an absolute belief… Which contradicts your claims!